Saturday, August 18, 2012

"Slow Art Day" sounds like a good thing to have happen. As the article (link above) points out, many museum/gallery goers only spend about 17 seconds looking at a work of art, as well as try to see everything that they can in one huge gulp.I can understand the impetus to want to see as much as you can if the museum is in a place that you might not be able to visit again or for a very long time, but, overall, most works barely get any attention at all, even the so-called "iconic" works. Today, people look for a few seconds and then the phone cameras come out, or they are walking around with their phones extended constantly taking videos and photos while not really studying or experiencing the works in front of them at all. Here's to hoping that "Slow Art Day" catches on...

Friday, August 17, 2012

This week in the studio has been about housekeeping and when you move things that haven't been moved in months or years, you find things that you'd long forgotten about, like this list (above) that I found on Wednesday afternoon. It's from September of 2002 and was written a couple of months before I moved to my current space. In the lower right corner, you can see that I was ready to have a new space.

The one I had at the time at 315 North 12th Street, just north of Vine Street, was coming apart at the seams, as was the whole building. Whoever owned the building that month wasn't going to let maintenance get in the way of a perceived good investment. It was a solid old twelve floor warehouse that housed a couple of whole-floor sweatshops, as well as artist, photography and fashion studios. I say "that month" because in the time that I was there, about 5 years or so, there was a steady owner (based in New York), but suddenly, in the last year that I was there, the ownership changed at least three times and the last owner was obviously trying to get in on trying to convert the building into condo lofts.

The strategy was to let the building fall to pieces, forcing everyone to move out and it worked. They had one maintenance man for the entire building and he couldn't keep up with all of the repairs that the place needed. The last straw for me was when a leak, not a small one, from the roof came through to my studio and nothing was done about it for too long.

I finally started a search for a new space and found the one that I've been in for the past ten years. Nothing lasts forever, but I've been making sure to make the most of what I have before it's time to move on.

Artist/blogger/entrepreneur Kesha Bruce posted this and I had no choice but to share it with you because it's THAT good. Having trouble getting past that state of procrastination brought on by the fear of getting started or finishing project? take a moment to ponder the "Cult of Done Manifesto". You only have a moment, though, because there's sh*t to get done!

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.

2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.

3. There is no editing stage.

4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.

5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.

6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.

7. Once you're done you can throw it away.

8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.

9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.

10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.

11. Destruction is a variant of done.

12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

The video for "Hell Broke Luce" from the Tom Waits album Bad As Me. Every time I walk into the studio, I think of Tom Waits. I know it's because I was introduced to his music in painting classes that I took with Mark Blavat when I was at Temple back in the '90s. The same goes for Arvo Pärt, whose music Mark also played in class.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

A currently untitled piece. I'm usually reticent to trust my feelings about a piece just after I choose to stop working on it, but sometimes you have to live in that moment and try to trust the feeling especially if it's a positive response. My default is to question my early positive responses and let things settle in for a while.

When I took the brush away from this piece for the last time yesterday (and stopped myself from doing anything more on it), I was quite happy with it. I'm sure that I'll look at it in more depth the next time that I'm in the studio, but for now, it still strikes a positive chord with me.